


Dust to Dust

by dollsome



Category: The Durrells (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 03:33:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21264383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollsome/pseuds/dollsome
Summary: The Durrells bring the fine art of the Halloween party to Corfu. Featuring kumquat-induced injuries, scary stories, Louisa identifying a little too much with tragic ghosts, and Spiros being wonderful.





	Dust to Dust

**Author's Note:**

> I felt a desperate need to write a bit more Durrells-y nonsense, so this is my Halloween present for myself, I guess??
> 
> Set in between season 1 and season 2.

_Let me in the wall you've built around_  
_And we can light a match and burn it down_  
_And let me hold your hand and dance 'round and 'round the flames_  
_In front of us_  
_Dust to dust_  
(The Civil Wars)

* * *

There’s no Halloween in Greece (the closest thing is Apokries in February, which is great fun), but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening in the Durrell household.

Larry insists that taking the opportunity to check in with your deepest fears and anxieties over mortality is healthy. The rest of the family agrees that he just wants an opportunity to spout pretentious memento mori babble and drink an amount that’s only acceptable at parties.

Still, there’s no saying no to a party, especially as one last hurrah before the chillier winter months set in, so they invite Theo and Spiros and the Petrideses to celebrate on the evening of October 31.

They don’t have any usual Halloween fruits or vegetables for festivities, but they do have a lot of kumquats, which they all decide will have to do. Leslie has a surprising knack for carving little faces into them, and he sets to work making kumquat replicas of all the guests. Lugaretzia is so delighted by her kumquat likeness that she stops mumbling about Satanism and gives them all a quite cheery goodnight before leaving.

The fun doesn’t stop there.

Bobbing for kumquats to see how many you can fit into your mouth at once actually proves an entertaining pastime -- that is, until Leslie chokes on one and Dr. Petrides has to clap him on the back repeatedly.

Unsurprisingly, the kumquat flies out of Leslie’s mouth and right into Larry’s eye.

It’s the kind of night that makes Louisa relieved she no longer has a gentleman caller to try to impress.

Once they’ve exhausted all the joys of kumquats, they settle outside in the garden. Margo has created an absolute festival of candles -- she ordered the guests to bring their own and wouldn’t let them inside until they’d paid the toll. Her insistence has paid off: the garden is transformed into an exquisitely eerie haven of hungry yellow-orange light, and the familiar sound of the waves on the beach below takes on the quality of an unearthly whisper.

The time in the garden is to be spent on lectures and recitations.

“Like at any good party,” Leslie mocks.

“Do shut up, ignoramus,” Larry retorts.

“That’s it. I’m squashing Kumquat Larry.”

“No, don’t!” Larry scrambles to recover his tiny citrus self. “He has my eyes. From back when I had two working ones, I mean.”

Even when they’re grown, raising boys really is an exercise in nonsense.

Gerry and Theo devote their speaking time to dispelling common myths about bats, and even offer everyone the opportunity to pet one of Gerry’s rescues from the privy. Spiros and Louisa gamely attempt it, while everyone else insists that they’d rather admire the creature from afar.

“What a little beauty,” Louisa effuses for Gerry’s sake, trying not to shudder.

“Strange but so adorable,” Spiros agrees. Off Gerry’s look, he amends, “And also not strange at all, when you see him up close.”

“Exactly,” Gerry says, pleased.

Louisa and Spiros surreptitiously sneak down to the water to rinse off their hands once the petting zoo portion of the evening is complete.

On her turn to speak, Margo spins a truly alarming yarn about a girl cursed by sentient acne. It’s far more powerful than anything that deranged has any right to be. At the end, everyone is nervously touching their faces in the fear of spontaneous, diabolical zits.

“I feel as if I’ve been hurtled back to age sixteen again,” Florence frets.

“That’s a fate too gruesome to contemplate even on Halloween,” Louisa replies.

Then again, lately her forties haven’t felt so different from the agonies of teenage years. Unwisely placed love; the dread of being alone forever; all of the old classics have been haunting her.

After Margo has ceded the spotlight, Larry pulls out a bunch of papers. To deal with his kumquat injury, he’s donned an eyepatch that Margo recovered from God-knows-where, and it gives him an appropriately sinister air.

“I’ve prepared a little something,” he announces proudly.

“Hurrah!” says Theo.

“No!” cry Leslie and Margo.

“Go on, darling,” Louisa urges.

Larry begins. “That night was dark, yes, but abundantly clear. Had you wished to, you could have counted every star in the heavens. Perhaps I would have, had distraction not stepped into my life in a form ruinous and sublime.”

He weaves the story along, a tale about two nineteenth century men on a nighttime walk through the Yorkshire moors who run into a mysterious, weeping, white-clad woman with an unearthly aura of sadness and beauty. Despite herself, Louisa feels shivers down her spine and starts to distrust the shadows around them in the nighttime air.

The White Lady wants one thing in the world: a young man to dance with her. One of the men -- the older, wiser one -- says no and leaves, aware of the consequences that such invitations can bring. But the other one, the young narrator, kindly asks her to dance. They waltz beneath the moon and stars, and the young man knows bliss like never before.

When daylight comes, the lady disappears, and the man awakens in his own bed in a stupor, unsure if he lived or dreamt that bliss. He can think of nothing during the long days besides going out to the desolate moors and dancing with the lady again in the moonlight. His wiser friend cautions him against it, telling him of a girl who froze to death wandering the moors, looking for her lover who had promised to run away with her and then proven untrue. The young narrator refuses to believe that such a resplendent being could be a ghost.

During one of their moonlight encounters, he begs the lady to let him see her in the light of day, yearning to marry her and begin a life.

“_ Don’t you see? _ ” the lady cries. “ _ I’m doomed to be here always, walking, walking, never reaching home, never finding a hand to hold. In dancing there is brief solace, but never enough. No dance lasts forever. _”

Suddenly, Louisa can’t stand it anymore. Damn Larry’s talent.

She gets up, murmuring an excuse to Margo about needing a drink, and goes to sit inside the house. The kitchen table is still covered in dishes from dinner. Without any humans there to use them, it’s a strangely lonesome sight. Even Leslie’s little carved kumquats don’t offer much comfort.

She sits down at one end of the table and rests her head in her hands. She tries not to think of what might have been--Sven among their party; Sven in this house; Sven curling up with her in bed at night, Sven wanting to--and fails spectacularly.

Thinking of marriage, her mind wanders to Lawrence. She pictures him smiling along as Larry read, tickled as ever by their son’s irrepressible creativity. For a second, she can imagine it so vividly that she feels sure if she walks back out, he’ll be sitting there among their children.

A miserable little whimper escapes her.

“Mrs. Durrells? Are you all right?”

She turns to see Spiros coming in through the kitchen door, holding one of the candles.

“I’m fine,” she says, attempting cheeriness. “The ghost stories just got a bit too frightening for me.”

“So you’ve come to sit in the dark alone?” Spiros says, unconvinced.

“Face your fears. Isn’t that what they always say?”

He sets the candle on the table, bathing the room in ruddy light, and sits down next to her with a look of tender sympathy. “What is it really?”

She looks at him and considers sticking to her lie. Something in his eyes makes her decide against it. “I’m just having one of those lonely nights, I’m afraid. It happens when you’re a widow.” She sighs. “It happens a little more when you’ve been recently spurned by the man you thought would make you into a wife again.”

Spiros puts his hand on hers. “I understand.”

“Thank you, Spiros,” Louisa says, covering his hand with her other one. “But you don’t, not really. And thank God for that. I wouldn’t want you to know a thing about this kind of loneliness. You don’t -- well, no one deserves it, but especially not someone as lovely as you.”

Spiros opens his mouth as if to speak, but then seems to change his mind. After a moment, he says, “He must have been a very good man, your husband.”

“Oh, the very best.” They would have gotten along well, Louisa knows. It’s easy to picture them laughing together.

“Good. He deserved you, then. Not an easy thing.”

“It’s been so many years, and still …” She swallows the lump in her throat, determined not to entirely murder the festive atmosphere. “You know how when you start out, there’s that perfect vision of how your lives will unfold together? And of course, it doesn’t go like that at all. There are far more bumps in the road than you can ever imagine at the altar. But you always picture the two of you battling those bumps together until you’re old and gray. You never think to wonder what it would be like, having to go at it alone, until it’s happening.”

Spiros watches her with pained eyes, but lets her talk instead of interrupting with kind words. It’s the kindest possible thing he could do, and Louisa cherishes it.

“And then with Sven,” she says, “I finally started to let the picture form in my head again. Well -- we all saw how that went. And now I feel so much like Larry’s White Lady, doomed to wander alone and heartbroken without ever finding anyone to call home.”

“You have your children,” Spiros points out gently. “Not the same, I know. But a wonderful home. And Mr. Durrells, he’s still with you that way.”

“That’s true.” Louisa smiles a little. “They all can be so like him sometimes in such unexpected ways. They’ll pronounce a word, or move a certain way, and suddenly it’s like he’s with me again.”

Spiros smiles back. “You see?”

“But sometimes,” she confesses, “I want someone I don’t have to look after.” Hastily, she adds, “You know there’s no calling more precious than parenthood.”

“The light of life,” Spiros agrees in the same tone.

“But God,” she finishes, “what a relief it would be to have another grownup around.”

“Well,” he says, “you have me.”

“You’re already somebody else’s husband,” Louisa reminds him fondly. “Although I’m beginning to wonder if this mysterious wife of yours exists.”

“She exists,” Spiros assures her. “She’s very busy.”

“I don’t wonder, with two little boys at home. The point is, I won’t have you wearing yourself thin trying to help a sad old English widow. You already do so much for us.”

“I don’t think I know this sad old widow.” Spiros’s eyes are warm with friendship. “Who is she?”

“A very pitiful creature who sneaks away to cry at parties. You wouldn’t like her at all.”

“This woman, I don’t think she exists. She’s like one of Larry’s ghosts. Made believe.”

“Make believe,” Louisa corrects affectionately.

“Make believe,” Spiros echoes. “I do know an English widow, yes, but she isn’t like what you say.”

“Oh? What’s she like?”

“Kind, and beautiful, and very funny. Life gives her many hardships. She doesn’t deserve them. Still, she always keeps fighting. This island is full of good people, but she is one of my favorites. Don’t tell my old friends.”

Smiling, Louisa says, “Beautiful, hmm? You don’t hear many widows described like that.”

Spiros shrugs, his lips curving. “I have eyes and I am not stupid.”

Louisa laughs and rests her hand upon his. “You’ve officially cheered me up.”

“Good. It’s no party without you.”

“That’s not true. Leslie spitting a kumquat at Larry’s eye was the highlight of the evening, and I had nothing to do with it.” For a moment, she enjoys that she’s made him laugh, then lands back in reality. “Don’t tell Larry I said that.”

Spiros mimes locking his lips and throwing away the key. Then he offers his arm to her, and she gladly accepts it.

“How did his story end?” she asks as they walk to the door.

“The curse was broken,” Spiros says, “with a kiss. The ghost woman turned flesh again, and they lived happily together in the light.”

“Liar,” Louisa scolds, adoring him.

+

“Oh, good, everyone’s back,” Larry says, pleased, when they step back outside. “Who wants another ghost story?”

“I’d rather die,” Leslie says.

“Don’t do it,” says Margo. “Then he’ll just tell a ghost story about you, and where does that leave the rest of us?”

“In hell,” pipes up Gerry, looking pleased with himself.

“My ghost stories are electric! It’s not my fault you can’t appreciate real storytelling. You people have got no taste. That doesn’t mean our guests should be deprived. Theo, Dr. Petrides, Mrs. Petrides -- another ghost story?”

“Your storytelling skills are exceptional,” Theo says diplomatically.

“But maybe you should lie down and rest your eye,” Dr. Petrides says.

“Can’t be too careful with a citrus injury,” agrees Florence.

Larry ignores that valuable medical advice. “See? Exactly! This next one really dives into Freud’s uncanny--”

“How about some music?” Spiros interrupts.

Everybody voices their enthusiastic approval.

Louisa mouths ‘Thank you’ at him. Spiros smiles and bows his head.

The night turns much sweeter with the guitar softening the darkness. Louisa sits beside Gerry and Roger and sways, watching everyone who’s had a bit too much to drink make happy fools of themselves.

Spiros comes to check on her. Still playing, he says over the music, “You’re not dancing.”

“I haven’t got anyone to dance with.”

“That matters?” Spiros eyes the messy gaggle of humans currently insulting the art of dancing in myriad ways.

“Apparently not,” Louisa says, “but I don’t feel up to it just yet. For now, I’m content to sway.”

“Very well,” Spiros replies. “One day, Mrs. Durrells, we will dance.”

“One day,” Louisa agrees, smiling at him.

Spiros departs back into the happy throng. She taps her foot along to the music as she continues to watch the revelry.

Gerry remarks, “I’m glad you’ve got a Roger of your own.”

“Really, Gerry. Spiros is a human being.”

“I _ meant _ a loyal friend who’s always there for you.”

“Ah,” Louisa says, a pleasant feeling dawning. “I suppose he is, then. And being compared to Roger _ is _a high compliment coming from you.”

“Or in general,” Gerry says.

Louisa pats Roger’s head as she watches Spiros play. “Spiros does bring a certain sunshine to our lives, doesn’t he?”

“It’s too bad you can’t marry him. You and him are much more suited than you and Sven were.” 

“Because Spiros fancies women, you mean?”

“Because you’re always smiling and laughing with Spiros instead of worrying a lot and acting odd like you did with Sven.”

“That’s because Spiros is my friend and Sven was my … gentleman friend. The rules of conduct are entirely different.”

“Well, that’s stupid. They shouldn’t be. Are we really sure Mrs. Spiros is real?” 

“_Yes_, Mrs. Spiros is real.” Louisa tries to sound like she’s never wondered the same thing herself, let alone tonight. “But never mind all that. Spiros and I will have a double wedding with you and Roger, shall we?”

Gerry makes a face at her, clearly at his limit of parental nonsense, and gets up. “I’m going to dance. Come on, Roger.”

When Margo brings out the gramophone, everyone is tipsy enough (or, in Gerry’s case, glad enough to be away from his mother) to cheer in celebration, and the dancing gains new verve. Roger leaps around happily at everyone’s heels. Larry’s eyepatch makes the rounds; everyone takes their turn modeling it and showing off an especially atrocious dance move.

Louisa’s mood has no choice but to brighten at that.

After his turn with the eyepatch, Spiros passes it to Theo and sets his guitar on the table beside Louisa. He smiles down at her, reaching forward. “My hands are free now, if you want to dance. But if you want to sit, I am happy to sit with you.”

“Spiros,” Louisa says, beaming, “I would love to dance.”

He grins. “I was hoping so.”

He pulls her out of her chair, spinning her under his arm. Even though she hasn’t had as much to drink as the others (a minor Halloween miracle, that one), she still feels the best kind of drunk as they whirl around like fools, laughing and clinging to each other and very nearly knocking over Margo’s candles. The narrowly averted chaos makes the dancing all the giddier.

Bathed in warm candlelight and Spiros’s smile, surrounded by the people she loves most, Louisa decides she isn’t so very like Larry’s White Lady after all. Dancing is more than enough to live on, so long as you do it right.


End file.
